Titane

Steel and flesh collide in a jet-black horror comic that, perhaps surprisingly, snapped up the Palme d’Or last year.

Titillating titanium: Agathe Rousselle

Julia Ducournau is only the second woman in history to win the Palme d’Or – the top prize – at Cannes. Which is kind of ironic as her new film exudes the sort of untamed virility one associates with David Cronenberg, his son Brandon or the Argentine shock auteur Gaspar Noé. But then Mme Ducournau does like to shock. Her first film, Raw (2016), allegedly had cinemagoers fainting in the stalls. Indeed, the story of a vegetarian turned into a cannibal following a hazing ritual at veterinary college, the film was replete with imaginative sex and violence and dead animals. With Titane, the recipe remains the same, although the animals have been replaced by cars.

The opening shot is virtually pornographic in its lurid attention to the viscera of an automobile, private parts traditionally, and discreetly, tucked away under the bonnet (or ‘capot de voiture’, to use the French). And so the carburettor, cylinder head, big end and dipstick are exposed in a lubricated orgy of moving parts as the vehicle carrying our protagonist, Alexia, hurtles along the autoroute. Of course, films that open with its characters trapped in a car invariably end badly, and so it goes with Alexia who, after the accident, has a titanium plate fitted in her skull. And, as anyone who’s had a titanium plate fitted to their scalp will tell you, the hair doesn’t grow back to disguise the injury. So, it is this distinctive appendage that marks Alexia out from her fellow exotic dancers, a feature that does nothing to deter the lascivious attention of her admirers. Alexia is now 32 and is first seen in full throttle, so to speak, writhing her booty about on the capot de voiture of a Cadillac at a motor show. Yet, while the menfolk have an eye for our sparsely attired gyrator, Alexei would seem more interested in the steel and chrome body beneath her.

Titane is as original an example of the ‘body horror’ genre as one might find, although there are perhaps echoes of Stephen King’s Christine and David Cronenberg’s Crash, where a bit of piston action gets to stir a character’s loins. It’s hard, if not impossible, to guess where Titane is headed and so it continues to surprise from one scene to the next. Jaw-dropping might be a suitable adjective to describe the movie, as we are subjected to imagery we are unlikely to forget for the rest of our lives. However, unlike Raw, the music score is very much part-and-parcel of the action, while Alexei remains an enigma. Raw started on a human, naturalistic note, before slipping into the arena of the danse macabre. Here, Ducournau throws her audience into the stylistically bizarre from the start until, later on, introducing a note of humanity. Titane is nothing if not cinematic, and is bound to divide opinion emphatically, although few can deny the commitment that the newcomer Agathe Rousselle brings to her role. Let’s just say that she gives it her all and allows Ducournau’s camera to witness her in an astonishing array of unusual situations. Previously best known as a model, feminist and embroidery fanatic, Rousselle delivers a tour de force of naked ambition, the like of which we haven’t seen all year. Meanwhile, Ducournau continues to exhibit a strikingly innovative stance, marking her out as one of the most original directorial forces in French cinema.

JAMES CAMERON-WILSON

Cast: Vincent Lindon, Agathe Rousselle, Garance Marillier, Laïs Salameh, Myriem Akheddiou, Mara Cissé, Marin Judas, Bertrand Bonello, Dominique Frot. 

Dir Julia Ducournau, Pro Jean-Christophe Reymond, Screenplay Julia Ducournau, Ph Ruben Impens, Pro Des Laurie Colson and Lise Péault, Ed Jean-Christophe Bouzy, Music Jim Williams. 

Kazak Productions/Frakas Productions/Arte France Cinéma/VOO/BeTV-Altitude Film Distribution.
108 mins. 2020. France/Belgium. UK Rel: 26 December 2021. US Rel: 1 October 2021. Cert. 18.